Am I missing something, or are these flat out better than any of the alternatives? A reduction in required Power, standard costs, a reduced journey time and a warp journey which actually comes out ahead on safety due to the reduced travel times? There has to be a catch somewhere (or, if there isn't, I'm going to have to introduce one).

No catch. If you reduce it to one encounter every 2 days it makes more sense, in my opinion.

If a ship is doing a lot of short journeys, the benefits aren't that great. For most rogue traders though, it's a superb acquisition.

RAW for the Miloslav indeed makes no sense. I've house ruled it the following way:

The number of warp travel encounters is determined before halving the travel time. So a 30 days travel would be done in 15 days and generate 10 warp encounters (instead of 6 with a normal warp engine).

Yes, the Miloslav is flat out better than a normal warp-drive, more power efficient, quicker, safer.

However, the wicked GM in me always has wondered just why is it so superior? Forbidden heretek components? Xenotech contamination? Precious archeotech? Maybe even enslaved daemons at the core of the drive.

How would the party cope if, for instance, they discovered that there oh-so-good warp drive was only possible because of a forbidden artificial intelligence pulling the strings to create all those good benefits?

Hygric said:

How would the party cope if, for instance, they discovered that there oh-so-good warp drive was only possible because of a forbidden artificial intelligence pulling the strings to create all those good benefits?

Not strictly speaking for all the characters, but...

1. Is it working

2. Is it messing with us

3...

4. Profit?

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/526/roguetraderflowchart.png/sr=1

Great stuff Errant

Needed a good laugh - and yet....it's all so true at the same time.

Hygric said:

This is getting used in my next game.

I'm a bit surprised...this thread is 2 years old and yet I've not found another that addresses this glaring problem. How do all you GMs out there deal with this? In my second campaign, still running, I've taken out the doubled speed of the Miloslav entirely and it's still the warp drive of choice for my players. What's the point of other warp drives?

We made the Miloslav a bit of a taboo drive, not quite heretech but getting there. It doesn't speed up Warp travel any more but rather reduces the amount of time that passed in the real world.

So warp travel still takes just as long, but with it you can (not always) maintain a 1 to 1 ratio of days travelled versus sidereal time.

That's useful if you have something time sensitive you need to get done. Not so useful if you want to speed up your colonies...

I will just compare the original Warp Travel time for calculating the encounters, before I halve it for the actual time taken.
(so instead of getting 2x the encounters for 2x the speed, they get ~3.75x the encounters for 2x the speed)

Keep it simple- give it an SP cost. Not sure why this had to be necro'd when there are so many solutions of varying simplicity.

1) Make it rarer, with the concomitant SP cost inherent to that rarity. Or make it Archeo-/Xenos-tech.

2) the Yorke/Red Bart method of MOAR ENCOUNTARS , which could risk slowing the game.

3) Make it heretical, or at least questionable in nature, and slap a permanent morale penalty on the ship.

4) Make it a plot point, and then punish them with Inquisitorial or AdMech investigation.

5) Some combination of the above

6) Just ignore it. It's just one more way that the player's ship is going to be slightly better than anyone else's, and there are so many ways that the playership is inherently better in more game-affecting ways in RAW (all ahead flank plus lock on target plus player-skill BS shooting tests plus all of the other player actions, compared to the limited number of actions NPC ships can make) that this is really just a drop in the bucket.

I'll have to disagree Annaamarth. It's a big deal. Take any of the published scenarios and toss in a Miloslav drive. The whole scenario just got tossed out the window. Let's be specific and use Lure of the Expanse. The players take a month or two travelling to their first clue. The scnenario recommends other Rogue Traders at the destination for some excitement and intrigue...except they are all weeks behind the Rogue Trader and the clue is gone before they get there, hence there is no competition for the rest of the adventure. Or nerf that part of the scenario and the players Miloslav it over to the first pattern on the map. Unlike the scenario suggests, there will be no competition because none of the other RTs have a Miloslav. Meanwhile the players go on to objectives 3, 4, and 5 and maybe....MAYBE run into a competitor at the last one or two.

And what happened in the outside world while all this takes place? The Rogue Trader zips a month to an objective while a year passes in the outer world. They spend a month there and take off to the next objective, which is, say another month away. Meanwhile the other RTs show up at objective 1 and spend a month there finding nothing. That month is only a few days for the RT players in the void. Say the non-Miloslavs come up with something (of course, you're having to Deus Ex the whole thing) and zip off to another objective, also say another month away (but they are all further than that, aren't they?). Meanwhile the Miloslavers get to objective 2, get their cookies, and jet away to objective 3, which is what the non-Miloslavers are headed to. But the Miloslavs still get there first, loot the cookie jar again and are off to yet another.

It's a big deal. The Runecaster is just as big, but I don't ever see people going for it with their starting ship.

And yes, I was hoping people here had played enough to have made some rules on the Miloslav. It's a complete no-brainer to get one. Even after removing its super-human trait my players still buy it every single time. Why wouldn't they?

And yes, I was hoping people here had played enough to have made some rules on the Miloslav. It's a complete no-brainer to get one. Even after removing its super-human trait my players still buy it every single time. Why wouldn't they?

Because they can't find one. Ship parts are very difficult to find.

There are a few fixes that you can put in that I've thought about. Increase the difficulty of each Warp Encounter the longer you're in to represent the more dangerous use of warp travel, or implement a tearing system of Warp Encounters where you roll twice and take the worst.

I ultimately didn't bother with it because my players do a good enough job derailing my plot that I don't WANT to have them bogged down in the Warp. However if Miloslav engines are so superior (and they are), then also all enemies in thebook will have them. Easy.

7) Give the opposing Rogue Traders and organizations similar ways to speed their collective ways through the warp. "Anything you can do, I can do," said the GM to the players. Assuming it's not of increased rarity, xenostech, archeotech, or heretical in nature there is no reason for every rival out there to have the same drive. Assuming it is of increased rarity, xenostech, archeotech or heretical in nature, there is no reason for some rivals out there to have the same drive. [edit: ninja'd]

8) Location, Location, Location. While everyone was racing to (place everyone is racing to), not everyone necessarily had the same starting location. Therefore, even without a Miloslav drive, it's not impossible to assume that some (but fewer) people got 'there' first, just by virtue of being closer (in warp-travel terms) to begin with.

9) Instead of halving travel times, reduce them by 25%.

10) Ban it from your game or for starting vessels.

You make some good points- the Miloslav drive is perfect for a warp-style race, with checkpoints and everything. RAW, it is a strategically powerful weapon, and I was wrong to minimize that- all of the other strengths players have are tactical in nature, and this is a very different tool in the toolbox.

However, there are still an abundance of ways to fix it- these were all off the top of my head.

I don't object to players acquiring strengths though, so my personal preference would be a combination of options:

-1: increase SP

-3: issue a constant morale penalty for using a warptech device, and rather than increasing encounters, increase morale damage due to warp encounters ("We brought this on ourselves!" the crew wail)

-4: the Divine Light of Sollux would like a word.

-5: (implicit, because this is a combination of the above)

-7: there are other people who use this- particularly reavers, Chaos warbands and Rogue Traders of a certain stripe , who don't care what the Inquisition, Divine Light of Sollux, or in fact the crew think about the warp drive in use.

Let's be specific and use Lure of the Expanse.

I was about to write about this. You said it all.

I will give them the pleasure though (to get there in half the time), but they will pay for it dearly while in transit.

Giving all the other RTs out there the same drive is the same as tossing out the standard and making the miloslav the new standard. I really hate outright banning stuff from the game. I've done that with the murder-servitors, but I why won't get into why since that would be a new thread in its own right (maybe I'll start that thread, hmm?). I don't want to make a new series of rules that just complicates the game. I like making it cost SP, but how much? I tried 2 and they still bought it without second thought. I guess that's the problem. With ship backgrounds from Into the Storm and the Warrant histories, new ships can start out with 3 archeotechs, or with 2 archeotechs and 1 xenotech. It's easy for players to pick some really powerful combinations.

Giving all the other RTs out there the same drive is the same as tossing out the standard and making the miloslav the new standard. I really hate outright banning stuff from the game. I've done that with the murder-servitors, but I why won't get into why since that would be a new thread in its own right (maybe I'll start that thread, hmm?). I don't want to make a new series of rules that just complicates the game. I like making it cost SP, but how much? I tried 2 and they still bought it without second thought. I guess that's the problem. With ship backgrounds from Into the Storm and the Warrant histories, new ships can start out with 3 archeotechs, or with 2 archeotechs and 1 xenotech. It's easy for players to pick some really powerful combinations.

You banned murder servitors?!? Why? They are awesome!!!

If you're having that much trouble with them, re-write them from the ground up. Increase the power cost for that speedy warp travel. Make it less efficient.

Have you tried working a morale hit into it?

I personally don't see an issue with it - warp travel time to real world time ratio is weird enough normally, but with such a fast drive the chance of full on time travel (ie arriving before you even left) are increased, which will come back to bite the players in the ass eventually...

You banned murder servitors?!? Why? They are awesome!!!

They're ridiculously awesome. +20 Command AND the ability to select your critical effect (including the ever-popular fire) basically means that PCs with even a minor amount of Command continue to faceroll their way across most enemies. Personally I give the players a choice in configurations. Either they get +20, or they get -10 and the ability to choose the critical effect.

You banned murder servitors?!? Why? They are awesome!!!

They're ridiculously awesome. +20 Command AND the ability to select your critical effect (including the ever-popular fire) basically means that PCs with even a minor amount of Command continue to faceroll their way across most enemies. Personally I give the players a choice in configurations. Either they get +20, or they get -10 and the ability to choose the critical effect.

I suppose if you are trying to "balance" things then sure, I could see some changes being made. Our group almost never deviates from RAW

I find the entire worry about the Milslav drive funny. You do realize that while it allows faster travel, ships equiped with it will have more encounters per actual days in the warp? That means if you spend 300 days in the Warp you will travel further, but have 40 more encounters (66% more). That is the risk of the drive, and why you don't see it on every transport or Imperial Navy ship. Transports are less likely to be able to handle the extra encounters, and the Imperial Navy puts reliability before performance as a rule. For shorter range transport runs it is actually not worth it, as most of the time is spent traveling to the planets and loading/unloading. For Rogue Traders I imagine those who are willing to take the risks have it, those who have more fear of the Warp dont. I have modifed several RT ships in the books so that they have it, while leaving it off of others. If you ignore Warp Encounters most of the time, you should pay more attention to them when a ship has such a drive. If you really need to 'ballance' it further, I would simply provide a +5 or +10 modifier to the encounter table in Navis Primer (or -5 to -10 in the core rulebook). That keeps the idea of a faster, but more dangerous, drive without overly penalizing the players.

Of far more concern to GMs should be the Warpbane Hull. It provides a +10 to Navigation (Warp), which not only makes trips safer but usually halfs the travel time as well. It also lets the players roll twice for encounters and choose one. That is extremely valuable. It costs SP, but every ship my players ever get is refit with one ASAP. It is even completely orthodox and would actually be seen as a sign of piety. It is only a -30 Aquisition to take later, so players can find one a lot easier than the Best Macrocannons they paid for with SPs if they wait til after the game starts. It is also (realistically) a much easier component to add later than a Warp Engine. Of course it is perfecly legal to match it with a Miloslav Drive and a Runecaster for heretically fast ships...

On the note of difference in ship travel times, remember that anything that gives the Navigator a bonus also speeds up the ship. There are several components, as well as many different player choices, that can do so. I find it better to simply use GM fiat to say that the other RT had better maps, or rolled well, or had a component they didn't know about to allow them to keep up.

So you spent 300 days in the warp. The other guy spent 600 days. I'm not seeing how you get more encounters with the Miloslav.

That's 100 (300 days) encounters versus 120 (600 days) to travel the same distance. It halves the duration of all warp passages after all.

A five day journey becomes 2.5 days and it's still just one encounter for both warp engines. A standard 30 day journey will be halved to 15 days and have 5 encounters versus 6 encounters with the standard drive.

It is simply superior. If you're comparing just someone that has been in transit for 300 days then yes, the Miloslav would've caused more encounters but would have travelled more or less twice as far as the guys in the standard Warp drive.

EDIT:

A more practical example:

Damaris to Footfall takes 175 days according to the Navis Primer. A Strelov-equipped voidship will have to roll for encounters 35 times. A Miloslav-equipped voidship will traverse that in 88 days, round it to 90 days, and will roll for encounters 30 times.

Yes, by the time the Miloslav voidship makes it to Footfall and returns to Damaris he would have made 60 rolls for encounters after travelling the warp for roughly 175 days. However, the Strelov voidship would only have just arrived at Footfall.

And it would then have to spend another 175 days going back and would have made 70 rolls for encounters in almost a year's worth of transit.